


sigh no more

by flaneuse



Category: The Pacific - Fandom
Genre: M/M, i just need these two to be happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-25
Updated: 2012-07-25
Packaged: 2017-11-10 16:21:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/468289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flaneuse/pseuds/flaneuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sledge and Snafu lose themselves in the war and find each other along the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sigh no more

**Author's Note:**

> I actually wrote this the day I watched The Pacific for the first time, because I was so emotionally distraught thanks to Sledge and Snafu, so I wrote this to remedy my pain, and it's finally getting posted somewhere.

Sledge woke as the train jolted forward, just as it left New Orleans. It was darker than it had been when he’d fallen asleep somewhere in Arkansas, feeling foolishly comforted as Snafu stared at him, customary smirk in place. That smirk had been his companion for as long as he’d known Snafu.  
When he’d met him, and Snafu had tossed his helmet on the bed that Sledge had meant to claim, the smirk was daring him to protest. But Sledge hadn’t. He wasn’t strong enough yet, hadn’t earned his place, so he just shouldered his pack and left the tent, unaware that he’d eventually grow to rely on that smirk every time he felt his resolve wavering.

That smirk was still there days later, when Snafu had said, “I like to watch the new guys sweat.” He had said guys, had said it in the plural, but somehow, Sledge had a feeling that Snafu had meant that statement just for him. That was the first time that smirk had sent chills down Sledge’s spine, even in the mind-numbing heat of the islands.

It wouldn’t be the last time however. When Sledge had killed his first man, it wasn’t in the heat of battle. It was in a foxhole, at about six pm, on a Tuesday. Everyone had been more or less relaxing, but Sledge never relaxed around Snafu, and he was alert, fingers clenching and unclenching around the barrel of his gun.

“Shh!” Someone said from a few feet away, and the company fell silent instantly.

“Jap scout, straight ahead,” and there was. Somebody hefted a gun and cocked it, ready to shoot, but Snafu had shaken his head.

“Wait,” he said, and jerked his head toward Sledge. “Let Sledge do it. Let him get a taste o’ that yellow blood.” Snafu’s mouth seemed to curl around that last word, lips and tongue caressing the o’s and punctuating the ‘d.’

Sledge swallowed hard and braced himself. It wasn’t the first time he’d shot a gun and it wouldn’t be his last. He was sure he’d be able to kill in the heat of battle, adrenaline coursing through his veins like an aphrodisiac, urging him onward and forward. But he wanted to know if he could kill now, in the quiet before the battle, when his enemy wasn’t expecting it.

And he did. To surprising anticlimax, a shot rang out and the Japanese soldier fell, bullet hole in his sternum, and Snafu had fixed Sledge with that goddamn smirk, like he was fucking proud or something, and it wasn’t until Sledge thought that that he realized he had wanted to make Snafu proud. He had wanted to show, not just to himself, but also to Snafu, that he could do it. This time there was something else in Snafu’s eyes accompanying the smirk—a thirst, a hunger, a desire? Sledge shook it off as he felt the chill down his spine, and he sunk back down into his foxhole, ignoring the encouragements from his fellow NCOs, focusing on the one verbal encouragement he didn’t get.

That smirk was also present the very first time Snafu kissed him. It was after the airfield at Peleliu, after Snafu had fallen behind, after Sledge had gone back for him. It was night, and everyone was asleep, save the marine on watch, who was paying more attention to the surrounding brush than two fucking marines who couldn’t sleep.

“You ran back for me.” Snafu said, his head tilted back so his curls were brushing the dirt. He turned toward Sledge, just a hint of that smirk on his lips. “You stopped, and you turned around, and you ran back. For me.”

It was the longest sentence Sledge had ever had to hear, Snafu’s goddamn unhurried air practically solidifying between them.

“Yeah,” Sledge affirmed, leaning forward until he was just a few inches away from Snafu, so close that he could smell the dried sweat and blood caked on Snafu’s skin; a scent that shouldn’t be arousing, but in the middle of war, when it was all you knew and then some, was the only thing that mattered.

There the smirk was, fully formed and entirely superior, daring him to move those last few inches, here in the open, where anyone could see. In the end however, Sledge didn’t have to, because it was Snafu who surged forward and pushed their lips together.

Snafu tasted like cigarette smoke and desperation, or maybe it was Sledge who was desperate, letting it bleed all over Snafu, smearing it with bold swipes of his tongue.

And surprisingly it was also Snafu who pulled away first—in the end, it would always be Snafu who was the scared one, Snafu who could never find the courage to just grab hold and never let go—and when Sledge finally looked at him, not before licking his lips slowly, savoring what might be his first and only taste of Snafu, the smirk was gone. There was no trace of it on his face; it was replaced entirely with uncertainty, with a fear that Sledge would only see on his face once more in their lives together.

Snafu wasn’t scared that they’d get caught; no he was never scared of that—to be completely honest, he knew they all thought he was batshit crazy. They wouldn’t spare it a second thought, just write it off as the Cajun getting his rocks off any place he could. It was war, and girls were scarce. He knew there were a few already, could hear the whispered grunts in the dark—grunts that were unmistakably the product of sexual exertion. Snafu knew from experience you couldn’t make those noises any other way.

No, it wasn’t all that. Snafu, Sledge realized, was scared of rejection. Scared that maybe he’d made it all up in his head, that maybe Sledge was too young, too impressionable when they’d met and Snafu pushed himself on him too fast, or just that Sledge wouldn’t want him.

But Sledge did. He always did.

“Sledgehammah,” Snafu said, his attempt at indifference given away by the shaky ‘s’ and the way he drew it out just a little too long to be casual.

“Of course I did,” Sledge grinned, and he could feel Snafu grinning back against his mouth. They wouldn’t do much more that night, when there was so much to do the next day. Nobody was sleeping that deeply.

There was no smirk now either, as Sledge looked around the train car. There was no smirk, because there was no Snafu. Sledge swallowed rapidly around the lump in his throat, wiping suddenly clammy hands against his uniform pants. There was nothing to say, really. Sledge knew trying to hold on to Snafu was like trying to keep water in cupped hands. He’d slip away eventually. There was nothing Sledge could do until Snafu decided he wanted to hold on right back, just as tightly, and for just as long.

So Sledge settled back into his seat, took out his Bible, and ran his fingers down the worn and dirty pages. He’d had that Bible about as long as he’d had Snafu. He held onto it now, closing his eyes and willing sleep to come back, steadfastly ignoring the hot press of tears against his lids. If he was lucky, he wouldn’t wake up until Alabama.

\---

 

Sledge didn’t know what was wrong with him.

Every single time there was a knock on the door, or the phone rang, Sledge found his heart hammering in his chest, painfully reminiscent of the unsteady recoil of a firing gun. He couldn’t help but hope, each time, that it was Snafu at the door, having come to his senses at last.

This time was no exception. Sledge was sitting in an old wicker chair in the sunroom in the front of the house, head back, eyes closed, pipe grasped loosely in between his lips. He was relaxed, skating the thin line between sleep and consciousness, and thinking about Snafu. Snafu’s skin, in particular.

Contrary to the beliefs of his brother, Sid, and his entire company in the marines, Eugene had actually had physical relations with a woman. No, his brother was right, he was still a virgin (though it was only for lack of sufficient privacy and time that Snafu hadn’t taken care of that for him), but in high school, Eugene Sledge had a crush on a girl named Suzie Matthews.

Suzie was a purebred Southern belle; her cornsilk hair was always curled just so, the apples of her cheeks were always dusted with just enough blush to give her a peachy glow, and her eyes were greener than the emeralds that adorned her earlobes. And for some reason, she liked Eugene Sledge right back.

She had lost interest in him a few months later when Tim McCutcheon, blonde football player with the perfect genetic code, transferred in, but for a little while, things had been good. Sledge could recall holding her hand, running his palms down her milky white arms. He could remember kissing her; her lips were nice and soft,  
lipstick always leaving a bit of a stain on Sledge’s mouth no matter how long ago it had been applied.

He could remember all of this, but none of it held a candle to the way Snafu’s chapped, cracked, and bloody lips felt against his. It didn’t matter how soft and clean Suzie Matthews was; he’d trade it all for the feeling of Snafu’s calloused hands—caked with weeks’ worth of grime and blood and who knows what else—gripping his face, trailing down his abdomen, lower, lower—

Reality bled through the thin veil of protection his dreams provided as he heard a sharp rap on the door. But despite all his wishing, all his dreaming, it wasn’t Snafu. It would never be Snafu. And every day that sunk in just a little bit more, he curled inward just a little bit more, shutting out his mother, his family, and Sid, until there was nothing left but his memories and a hollow space in his heart where Snafu should be.

\---

“What, may I ask, is a snafu, Eugene?”

His mother’s bemused voice startled Sledge out his reverie, and he looked down at the paper and indeed saw the letters s-n-a-f-u written with disquieting steadiness. He glared faintly at his hand, angry at it for betraying him so, and looked up at this mother.

“Just something the Marines made up during the war. S-N-A-F-U. Stands for ‘Situation Normal: All Fucked Up.’” He tried to sound nonchalant, even chuckling a little at his mother’s tutting when he swore, but it wasn’t until he said it that he realized just how true the words were—not just about the war, about the continuous state of action they all had to live through. Where adrenaline and fear and a tiny bit of hope kept you moving until you passed out or died. No, it wasn’t just about the battlefield. It was about now.

It was about being on the train home, on the way back to normalcy you weren’t even sure you wanted anymore. It was about the fear of not being able to adjust when you got back home, the thought that maybe the dead ones were the lucky ones, because once you’d experienced war, you couldn’t ever go back. Your body may be at home, but your heart and soul and spirit were still in the jungles of Guadalcanal and the dirt of Okinawa.

But most of all, for Sledge, it was about being alone. It was waking up on the train and realizing he had been left, that he hadn’t even merited a goodbye. It was about waking up from terrors in the middle of the night, and instead of a pair of warm, strong, and understanding arms to fall back into, left to face a pair of struggling parents with no clue how to deal with a damaged son. And it was about waking up in the morning to a too-comfortable bed, wishing with all his might to be back in a foxhole, rocks digging into his spine and mosquitoes draining him dry, if it meant he could wake up next to Snafu again.

But he couldn’t, and he was left wondering if he was the only one who felt this way. If Snafu, just a couple states over, was lonely and angry and broken. If he regretted, just for a second, not waking Sledge up to say goodbye, to leave an address or a phone number, fucking anything to remember him by. To remind him that what they had shared wasn’t just a dream.

“Eugene honey? Was that important?” His momma asked, and Sledge blinked, unfocused eyes clearing up to show the paper that was now crumpled in his shaking fist. His hand had betrayed him again. Maybe he wouldn’t take up writing after all, if this was all that would come of it.

“No, momma, it wasn’t.” He said quietly, and stood to leave, white-hot letters imprinted on the back of his eyelids like a brand.

\---

Half an hour at the ball and Sledge had already turned down three different offers to dance from three very pretty girls. His brother was right; every girl in Mobile was dressed to the nines that night, looking for a man in uniform. And it seemed that, despite Sledge not wearing his, they’d found him anyway. He blamed his brother for that. But he looked at each of them, studied them, and found them wanting.

One of them had Snafu’s hair—embarrassingly curly, impossible to tame. Another was wearing a dress the exact same color of his uniform. The third had his nose. But none of them had his wicked smile or his Cajun drawl, which made him sound sleepy and dangerous at the same time. None of them had his eyes, which no matter the situation, were always glinting with a hint of something—mischief or excitement. It sometimes scared Sledge, how Snafu could find such pleasure in the war. But after a while, he got it. There was only one way to get through war alive. You couldn’t focus on surviving, no that would just get you killed. You couldn’t try and be a hero, couldn’t try and save your friends. That would just get you a Purple Heart, or maybe even a Bronze Star shipped home with your body, if they found it. You had to focus on something else entirely, to try and distance yourself from what was going on around you. It was the only way to retain even a fragment of your sanity.

Snafu turned the war into a game. Everything was new and exciting and fun to him. Carving gold teeth out of a dead Japanese soldier? It didn’t matter, because none of it was real. And once Sledge finally got that, it all clicked into place for him. There were a lot of fucked up people in the world, some made or made worse because of the war. But Sledge didn’t think Snafu was one of them.

But nobody got through the war unscathed. They may not be insane or irreparable, but they were still damaged, and Sledge was afraid that without Snafu, the damage would become permanent.

Suddenly, the heady scent of perfume and alcohol in the room became overbearingly cloying, and Sledge felt a sharp pain in his temple. His clothes became constricting and heat prickled the back of his neck uncomfortably. He had to get out, before he screamed.

Taking one last look at Sid and Mary dancing, he turned and made his escape.

\---

He wasn’t out there for long before Sid found him, packing his pipe with trembling fingers.

“I saw you making a break for it. Thought you could use a punch properly spiked,” Sid offered him a glass trepidatiously, like he was afraid Sledge would start if he made any sudden movements.

Sledge just thanked him, and they made embarrassingly transparent attempts at jokes until Sledge couldn’t hold it back any longer.

“How did all this happen?” He asked, the question out before he could stop himself. “I mean look at us Sid. Sittin’ here at a dance, drinkin’ punch? Not a scratch on either of us? I mean what the hell are we doin’ here? Why…” Sledge swallowed hard and forced himself to finish.

“Why did I end up back here when all those other fellas didn’t?” And why did I end up here alone? Was the unspoken end to his question, one he dare not voice to Sid.

Sid was silent for a moment, thinking long and hard about what he was going to say, and Sledge was reminded why Sid was his best friend. Sid was intelligent and thoughtful, and once upon a time, Sledge fancied himself in love with him. And while that feeling passed, Sid was always there for him, no matter what. And Sledge would be too.

“I thought that.” Sid finally said, looking Sledge straight in the eye. “Every guy back has thought that. But you just gotta pull yourself out of bed every morning and get on with the day. You do that enough times in a row, you forget some things. For a while anyway.”

But Sledge didn’t want to just forget everything. He didn’t want to just go through the motions like he was dead inside. Protests bubbled on the top of his tongue until he was ready to just tell Sid everything; about Snafu, about how fucking desolate and lost he felt here without him, and most of all, how scared he was that the combination of the war and losing Snafu was something he couldn’t ever recover from. Snafu had kept him centered and sane while fighting heatstroke and dodging bullets in the goddamn Pacific Theater. Snafu had been his focus. But without Snafu, the deaths and violence and fucking repulsive shit he saw his fellow Marines do came flooding back every time he closed his eyes, threatening to overwhelm him if he faltered but for a moment.

But then Mary Houston came calling for Sid, and the moment was gone.

Sid stood to leave, but not before asking him to come along.

“I’ll wrangle you a partner,” he offered, but Sledge wasn’t looking for a partner. He was just looking for Snafu.

“No, uh,” Sledge paused, as if he were going to add something else, then reconsidered and shook his head. “No.”

With that, Sid left him alone—smoking his pipe, staring wistfully into nothing like a character out of a fucking romance novel or something. And as Sid walked back into the ballroom to dance with the woman he loved, he realized why that look was so familiar.

It was how he looked any time Mary walked out of his sight.

\---

Fifteen minutes later and Sledge was ready to leave. He just couldn’t do it. He couldn’t stay here and make nice with all the rich widows or flirt with their very eligible granddaughters.

He exhaled forcefully and dumped the remaining tobacco in his pipe so he could pack a new bowl. One more bowl, and he’d walk home, fall into bed, just so that he could wake up the next day and go through the motions again, like Sid said. It was his only option, after all.

But then he heard a voice, painfully familiar, and Sledge looked up, surprised out of his reverie.

“I ain’t never run after nobody before,” There was Snafu, standing there, deep circles under his surprisingly quiet eyes. Sledge was still, unsure if what he was seeing was real. He stared uncomprehendingly at Snafu, and Snafu stared right back.

Snafu’s words were nonchalant, but the steady way he held Sledge’s gaze spoke volumes of his severity, and above all, his fear. It was true. He had never run after another, not man or woman.

Sledge, notably, had run after him many a time during the war. He risked his life to go back for him at Peleiu Airfield. But Snafu had never returned the favor. He had never needed to, never wanted to, until now. But here he was, in fucking Mobile, Alabama, standing in front of Eugene Sledge like it was the only place he should be.

“But you ran after me,” Sledge said slowly, not sure if it was a question or a statement. He started to pack his pipe; it calmed him, as he’d told Sid. And right now, with Snafu standing before him, uniform neatly pressed and hair slicked back like a picture out of a fucking magazine, he needed it. His hands were shaking and his heart was pounding against his ribcage. He wasn’t sure of the depth of what Snafu was offering, if Snafu was even offering anything at all.

His father was right. Eugene’s soul had been torn out in the war. He had tried to fit in back in Alabama, sign up for classes, find some way to exist the way he did before enlisting, but it hadn’t worked. It hadn’t worked because the war wasn’t the only thing that changed him.

For some reason, God (yes he still believed in God, so help him) had blessed him with a man more screwed up than him. He had met Snafu at a time when Snafu had already been chewed up by the war. He was damaged, harsh, and poisonous. But something in Snafu had woken up when he met Sledge. Something that made him want to protect, to love.

And they were both still so messed up, and Sledge wasn’t sure they’d ever be fixed. But he had hope. Snafu would never say it, but he knew he was beyond repair. But he wanted to fix Sledge. If there was one thing he could do, it was fix Sledge.

“Yeah,” Snafu said, answering the question Sledge hadn’t asked aloud. “I did. And I’m sorry I took so long.”

It was all he needed to hear.

A grin broke out on Sledge’s face and he dropped his pipe, taking one long stride so he was face to face with Snafu. Snafu had made the first move, Snafu had chased him all the way to Alabama, and it was Sledge’s turn now to show him that he wanted it too.

The corner of Snafu’s mouth was starting to curl into his signature smirk when Sledge pressed their lips together, wrapping his arms around Snafu’s neck.

Snafu, in turn, clutched Sledge’s face desperately, tongue delving into Sledge’s mouth, exploring, tasting, memorizing like he never had before. And it was Sledge who had to pull away this time, because Snafu wouldn’t let go.

Sledge gently disentangled himself from Snafu, chuckling softly as Snafu pressed kisses to his face and neck all the while.

“Merriell Shelton, I will have you know I am a proper Southern gentleman, and I will not be seen necking in the woods like some uncouth teenager.” Sledge asserted, but the way he bared more of his skin to the ministrations of Snafu’s lips, teeth, and tongue gave him away.

“Is that right?” Snafu asked, licking a long stripe up the length of Sledge’s throat.

“Yes it is,” Sledge managed to get out, shaky as his voice was. He pushed Snafu off and took his hand.

“Now,” Sledge said slyly, all former weight gone from his shoulders. “Let’s get you out of that uniform, sir. War’s over.”

“Well, goddamn, Sledgehammah,” Snafu chuckled and shook his head, letting himself be led away by Sledge. “Didn’t know you had it in ya’.”

The two walked off in the direction of Sledge’s family estate together, hands intertwined, carefree and laughing like they had never been to war, never seen the rotted corpses of comrades and enemies, bloated in the sun.

And while it would never be easy, and there was still so much for the two of them to figure out, for now, they were happy. For now it was all okay. The war had torn out Sledge’s soul, sure. But maybe, just maybe, Snafu could put it back together again.


End file.
